Saturday 20th
January 2007:
11.32am. Johanna's friends have just left, so now I finally have time to
sit down and write up my traditional birthday entry. I finished my exams
a long time ago now, well over a week and half and they went reasonably
well - I should get a 2.2 overall, maybe a 2.1 which isn't bad given the
crappy semester and poor coursework grades I received.

As we limber up to the next semester, I have plenty on my plate. Lots
of Future Society lectures, some thermal physics to study, shall be off
to Barcelona next week to visit a friend N- who has been having a rough
semester. Got a new computer to build whose parts I shall be ordering
from Barcelona so they are here when I get back. No shortage of things
to be doing ...

Usually this time of year I review my year, and decide the ups and
downs. I will say that one particular up of this year was that S-
organised the best birthday I have had in at least three years, and
unlike the usual depression I feel on my birthday at being one year
closer to death and another year of not getting enough accomplished, I
actually had a good time. S- let me down badly last semester, but she's
made up for it with that birthday - a little effort at the right time
can mean a great deal, and she got it spot on - even if as she says
herself, it was rather an easy steal. No matter I feel, my initial
problem with her was not her intentions but rather her timing, and this
time round she greatly improved her timing.

Ok, so major events in my mind of 2006:

Johanna and I broke up... and thus ending the longest relationship I have ever had. It
wasn't much fun, as it never is, but it was less awful than ever
before which is mostly due to Johanna being far more sensible than
previous girlfriends. But it also had something to do with me having
learned to let go rather than trying to assert control of a failing
relationship because I didn't want to lose it. I've finally at the
age of twenty-nine learned to let things which are dying to die
gracefully, which is about time. And here's the surprising jist -
her and I are doing better than ever before since we broke up. We
appreciate one another far more, and there is no longer that sense
that we were in perpetual decline. Now, being broken up, she is far
more of a positive thing than she was before, and while I logically
expected that that would be the case, I didn't actually expect it as
I've rarely (actually, no, I've never) seen that in anyone
else I've personally known.

Started on implementing Tn on The WorldNow I know everyone thought I was nuts at the time I was
starting Tn and saying it could be applied to everything, but
hopefully last summer those reading this diary got to see that
indeed yes it can. Right now I am finishing up an article on my
approach which is somewhat like thermodynamics but also somewhat
less Physics-based - after all, we are talking about social
phenomena here where intersubjectivisation rules. I learned during
the research for this article that I am not the first to think of
economic entropy flows, indeed this fringe idea is called
thermoeconomics and I just ordered about the only book on it
from Amazon with next semester's course books. Interestingly, I have
learned that the great Economist Jevons actually pioneered the
approach in the 19th century during his discussion of coal!

Reset my relationships with close friendsThis past semester has been one (yet again) of having become
over-invested in close friends. I am a lonely, fragile person and I
find it very easy to get caught up in the lives of (usually
dysfunctional so they need me) others. It gets too intense for them,
so they hurt me. That took out much of last semester in depression,
but then even at the start of that semester one had a sense of
impending shrinkage and thankfully I'm old and wise enough by now to
realise that the end of one cycle means the birth of a new cycle
which appears to have begun just before the Christmas break.

Should I have the Future Society in there? No, I don't think so -
while it could bea major achievement of 2006, it was very
much seed planting for enabling the PhD funding I want ie; it hasn't
yielded much yet except introducing us to quite a few important people
(with a lot more very important people to come this semester). In other
words, when/if I see the pan-out, then it'll get onto this list
though I'd doubt that would even be the 2008 birthday entry.

Right so, back to my article! I hope you all had a great Christmas
break, have fun!